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Friday, 30 December 2016

Review: Passengers 'A brutal disappointment'

Since probably the month of August, the film Passengers has been advertised to death, between August and December, I don't think I saw a single film in which Passengers was not trailed.

So by the time it actually came to going to see it, I actually wasn't looking forward to it that much, as I felt I had seen the entire film through the trailers anyway! With this in mind I did go to the cinema looking for something spectacular, looking for it to be the best Sci-Fi film for quite some time, looking to be pleasantly surprised.

In reality, I felt all I got was a very bad episode of Star Trek; a long drawn out story, in which I felt no emotional connection to Chris Pratt or Jennifer Lawrence's character.

This review does contain spoilers, in that I will say, the film keeps you interested in the hope that something surprising is going to happen, to pay you for coping with all the long drawn out scenes, but nope! Passengers falls flat on its face and left me feeling personally cheated.

The premise of the film was really good, it felt imaginative and like it could have been so much more than it was.

Even if the idea was to have this film as a setup for a really amazing sequel, the ending doesn't even leave you wanting more. It just leaves you wanting to sort of forget you ever went to see it and push it aside as the irrelevant piece of cinema it is.

Passengers focuses on the starship Avalon, which is a spacecraft transporting people from Earth to the new colony planet Homestead 2, a journey of over 100 years.

The company which offers the transport puts all passengers on board into hibernation, to then wake them up 4 months before arriving at the colony.

Something goes wrong and Jim Preston (Chris Pratt) is woken up, with 90 years to go until the Avalon reaches Homestead 2.

I won't give too much away, but another passenger Aurora Lane (Jennifer Lawrence) is also woken up too early, so the pair face the prospect of dieing before they reach the colony.

The synopsis sounds gripping and to its credit the suspense did keep me engaged for the near 2 hours it was on, but I felt there was just no pay off, apart from maybe seeing Chris Pratt in the shower.

To conclude; this film could have been so much more and that's what annoys me.

Rotten Tomatoes gives Passengers a 31% rotten rating with an average score of 5/10, but IMDB's user reviews give the film a 7/10, so maybe it's just down to personal taste, but I was highly disappointed.